Stop Street Harassment will be marching in this on Sunday. Please join us if you’re in the area!!
Archives for March 2015
Kabul Woman was Forced to Flee
Images and news of Kubra Khademi’s protest in Kabul, Afghanistan have been spreading online. She explained in an interview for this article why she chose to walk through the streets wearing metal armor:
“She first experienced street harassment when she was only four or five; a man touched her backside and she couldn’t say or do anything about it. At that young age, she wished she had an armored shirt so she couldn’t feel the touch of the man. As she grew older, she realized there was another body part of her that caught the attention of men: her bosoms. She says she experienced more street harassment on the streets of Kabul as she grew older. Her experience with street harassment motivated her to make the armored costume, adding that ‘I want people to remember my work, and they will remember my work…I wanted people to start talking about street harassment,’ and she succeeded in that.'”
Today I found out that a lot was happening that we didn’t see in the photos. Men were harassing her, insulting her, throwing rocks at her, and groping the female friends who came to support her. She planned to walk for 10 minutes but after just 8 ran into a taxi to escape the harassment. And even then, men hit the taxi with their hands. That wasn’t the end of it: “After her performance, angry men showed up at her door. Since then, the young artist has been forced into hiding at friends’ homes in the suburbs of Kabul.”
It takes a lot of courage to speak out in the face of that level of backlash and hate. I applaud her efforts, hope she can feel safe soon, and that her bravery will ultimately contribute to a cultural shift in how women and girls are treated in public spaces.
Peru’s Congress Approves Street Harassment Bill
Yesterday Peru’s Congress adopted the bill proposed last summer against street harassment!! Now it goes to the president for his signature. Congrats to our friends Paremos el Acoso Callejero who were instrumental in making it happen.
¡VICTORIA HISTÓRICA EN LATINOAMÉRICA! ¡El Congreso de la República del Perú ha APROBADO EL PROYECTO DE LEY de Rosa Mavila que PREVIENE Y SANCIONA EL ACOSO SEXUAL CALLEJERO sin ningún voto en contra!
Hasta hace tres años era normal que nos faltaran el respeto en la calle y tocaran a niñas en espacios públicos, ¡hoy el Estado reconoce que hay que tomar medidas para erradicar este problema!
Ahora continuemos trabajando por hacer efectiva la ley, que se enviará al Presidente para su promulgación. ¡No más violencia en las calles!
Como Paremos el Acoso Callejero Asociación Apala La Marcha de las P.U.T.A.S. la participación y compromiso de la congresista Rosa Mavila León asumido en el Un Un Billón de Pie – Perú del 2014
Image by: Diana Portal Farfán
Kenya: Undress Me Not
Linnet Nyawira Mwangi, Kisumu, Kenya, SSH Blog Correspondent
I recently watched the widely viewed street harassment video “Ten hours of walking in NYC as a woman” where a young woman wearing jeans and a crewneck t-shirt walked through Manhattan, and I couldn’t help but notice the countless times she was harassed on the streets.
This made me realise there is more to street harassment than just the mode of dressing. See, in Kenya, towards the end of last year there was a wide spread campaign dubbed #MyDressMyChoice. This was as a result of women being stripped naked on broad daylight by men who gave the excuse of indecent dressing. Since when did a miniskirt become indecent dressing? Stripping a woman who is supposedly indecently dressed does not make her more decent but robs her of her dignity. The most appropriate action would be giving her a ‘kanga’ to cover herself.
Looking at the issue of dressing keenly, we find that even the women who were attacked were not actually indecently dressed but they were attacked because they tried to defend themselves from the comments made by the harassers. It is not uncommon that some of the comments made are bound to make you angry but sometimes it seems that the more you argue with them and challenge them, the angrier they become and behave indecently towards you. I am happy that the government and human rights activists intervened and some perpetrators of the acts were caught and charged. The issues of stripping women in public is now unheard of and I hope this continues.
But street harassment is not just about clothing. Even women in hijab get cat called on the streets too. Street harassment occurs because many of us let it happen. We watch as the men perpetrate the act and assume that it is none of our business. Some of us even stand back to listen and giggle at the comments made by the street harassers instead of helping the victims. I would like to challenge each and every person to stand up for the women in these situations.
For the men out there, you should know that the woman you harass is someone’s sister or mother and they could also be your sister, mother or wife. I am sure you would not like it if the same was done to them.
Linnet is a student at Maseno University in Kisumu, Kenya pursuing a bachelor’s degree in sociology with IT. Follow her on Twitter @Shantel_lyn and Facebook @lynnette Shantellah.
Women’s History: Street Harassment Resistance in 1944 and 1970
Happy Women’s History Month! Here are two examples of street harassment resistance in the U.S. about which you may not know. They are both included in the introduction of my forthcoming book about global street harassment activism that I submitted to my editor on Sunday (!). The book will be out in early September 2015.
1. From the 1940s to 1960s a large number of black women collectively challenged the centuries-old practice of white men harassing and raping black women with impunity. In 1944, for example, white men harassed and then gang raped a twenty-four-year-old black sharecropper, wife and mother Recy Taylor as she walked home from church with female friends. Her story caught the attention of a Montgomery NAACP member Rosa Parks, an established anti-rape crusader. Parks led a national campaign for justice for Taylor that resulted in the assailants admitting they committed the crime — despite white male police trying to cover for them — and the case went to trial. Sadly, the all-white, all-male jury did not indict any of Taylor’s assailants.
Despite not gaining justice for Taylor, Parks’ campaign lay the foundation for other campaigns. In Danielle McGuire’s 2011 book At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance, she chronicles Taylor’s story and this important time period and how the civil rights movement began not just out of outrage over the lynching of black men, segregation, and general discrimination, but also because of people’s indignation over white men’s assaults of black women in public spaces.
2. During the 1970s and early 1980s, street harassment was occasionally addressed within the Women’s Liberation actions, the rape crisis center movement, and Take Back the Night rallies. Women hung up and distributed flyers, patrolled places with high rates reports of rape, and even held demonstrations. An example of a demonstration occurred in New York City in June 1970. Newspapers routinely printed the commuting schedules and physical measurements of pretty women who worked in Wall Street, and men would line up outside their workplaces to harass them. In response, Karla Jay and Alix Kates Shulman organized an “olge-in” during which they yelled sexualized “compliments” at men on the street.
“We’re trying to point out what it feels like to be whistled at, pointed at constantly every time we walk down the street…they think that we’re just sexual objects. And we don’t want to be sexual objects anymore,” one of the women said in an interview.
The work we do today builds on decades of resistance and the bravery of women like Recy, Rosa, Karla and Alix.